The Midnight Special

This week I focused on a few versions of 'The Midnight Special' and read the lyrics carefully. I was expecting to find sadness and oppression, since after all it's a prison song, but the energy of the song is lively and optimistic - especially the lines about the apron and dress, and of course the idea of the midnight special. The 'Midnight Special' itself is a Southern Pacific train that inmates hoped to ride when they were free. I couldn't find any reason why they called it that, but it fits.

The idea of a freedom train reminds me of slave songs and also of Elizabeth Cotten's Freight Train song, so it's a bit otherworldly, but Leadbelly sang about it in a faster-paced world that feels more familiar to me.

I also found optimism in the chapters about Leadbelly and Alan Lomax. Alan discovering over and over again what he wanted to do with his life, Leadbelly believing that recording with Alan got him out of jail. And the telling of it makes everything seem as simple as magic.

So I painted a magic train coming out of the dimness.

The Midnight Special (acetone transfer and watercolor)

Ballads

This week, I was curious about "Down by the Sally Gardens," what it is saying and where it comes from. Very little happens in the song, but there are a powerful ideas inside it.

It was down by the Sally Gardens, my love and I did meet.
She crossed the Sally Gardens with little snow-white feet.
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree,
But I was young and foolish, and with her did not agree.

In a field down by the river, my love and I did stand
And on my leaning shoulder, she laid her snow-white hand.
She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs
But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.

I love the beautiful images of the leaves and grass growing so easily.

I think it's tragic that we don't know exactly what happened to make him 'full of tears' at the end - we only know that he refused to 'take love easy' like his lover wanted him to, and it led to tragedy. Parts of the story are missing, and that's haunting.

The song is taken straight from a Yeats poem written in 1889. That poem is based on an older song that Yeats heard from a peasant woman in his native Ireland. Yeats wrote the poem by trying to reconstruct the lyrics from his memory and filling in the gaps. His poem then became a song. Back and forth.

There is debate (on MudCat and Wikipedia) about which song Yeats rewrote. It may have been one of the following.

This un-named song from Dublin:
Down by the Salley Gardens my own true love and I did meet;
She passed the Salley Gardens a-tripping with her snow-white feet.
She bid me take love easy, just as the leaves fall from each tree;
But I being young and foolish, with my true love would not agree.

In a field by the river my lovely girl and I did stand,
And leaning on her shoulder I pressed her burning hand.
She bid me take life easy, as the stream flows o'er the weirs;
But I being young and foolish, I parted her that day in tears.

I wish I was in Banagher and my fine girl upon my knee.
And I with money plenty to keep her in good company.
I'd call for liquor of the best with flowing bowls on every side.
Kind fortune ne'er shall daunt me, I am young and the world's wide.

The Rambling Boys of Pleasure
You rambling boys of pleasure, give ear to those few lines I write,
Although I'm a rover, and in roving I take great delight.
I set my mind on a handsome girl who ofttimes did me slight,
But my mind was never easy till my darling were in my sight.

It was down by Sally's Garden one evening late I took my way.
'Twas there I spied this pretty little girl, and those words to me sure she did say
She advised me to take love easy, as the leaves grew on the tree.
But I was young and foolish, with my darling could not agree.

The very next time I met my love, sure I thought her heart was mine,
But as the weather changes, my true love she changed her mind.
Cursed gold is the root of evil, oh it shines with a glittering hue,
Causes many the lad and lass to part, let their hearts be ever so true.

Sure I wish I was in Dublin town, and my true love along with me.
With money to support us and keep us in good company.
With lots of liquor plentiful, flowing bowls on every side,
Let fortune never daunt you, my love, we're both young and the world is wide.

But there's one thing more that grieves me sore is to be called a runaway
And to leave the spot I was born in, oh Cupid cannot set me free,
And to leave that darling girl I love, oh alas, what will I do?
Will I become a rover, sleep with the girl I never knew ?
From Penguin Book of Canada Folk Songs, (ed Edith Fowke)

Or it may have been a different variation. Either way, the part that they all have in common is the message about love: She bid me take love easy / as the leaves grow on the tree.

What does it mean to take love easy? Joanna Newsom, a contemporary musician, sings a haunting love song called Easy, in which love does not come easily at all. Ease in love is just out of reach both in her song and in Down by the Sally Gardens.

I also wondered what 'Sally' meant, so I looked it up and it may be a variation of a word for willow tree. A willow garden makes sense as an appropriate setting for romance and sorrow, and also as a reason for the weirs the song mentions. Weirs are for water, which willows love. There is a beautiful, resonant connection between trees, water, youth, and love.

But after all that searching, I still don't understand why the romance does not work out. There's no good reason.



My piece for this week is actually based more on "Barbara Allen," but most of the unanswered questions are the same. Why is the man dying from love with no explanation? Why does Barbara Allen still refuse him after he explains that he didn't mean to slight her? Why can't anybody communicate? What is love to these people? It seems so dangerous, so difficult, that I feel sorry for them all. I believe that the link between love and tragedy was a lot stronger in those days than it is today, perhaps because social expectations were different.









Hilarious Illustration by Henry Brock, 1934

Appalachian folk ballads are alluring to a lot of the people I know and the musicians I listen to, and I hear them often. I've listened to Sam Amidon's haunting versions of 'Pretty Saro' and 'Sugar Baby' over and over again, and I've gone back to hear the 'original' recordings of the same songs to find out what the difference is. I've liked the rhythms of banjo and country music for my entire life. In fact, I'm going to a bluegrass get-together tonight to sing and play some of the very same old songs, along with newer songs by popular groups like Shovels and Rope --- like  in Folk Song America, it's not just the style or antiquity that allows people to treat a song like a folk song, passing it down and playing it in their own individual ways. I'm not sure how my friends and I can feel comfortable appropriating Appalachian music -- It's not ours, culturally, and more than music from the Black South. But I think it's alluring because it's bloody, romantic and yet bizarrely matter-of-fact. In ballads about love and death, it's surprising how straightforward and emotionless the people are:

'Your parents don't like me because I am poor.' (The Wagoner's Lad)
'You can't have Barbary Allen.'
I think I can feel a chilling isolation behind these words, and I wonder where it comes from. If it's true that the songs were passed down and repeated more or less faithfully to preserve their authenticity, then they were only altered accidentally like in a game of telephone, definitely not to make them more emotionally true to each singer along the way.
Drawing flat paper people in my sketchbook....

I also spent a lot of time this week looking at images of the real people and real places behind these mysterious songs.

Clarence Ashley is from Mountain City Tennessee:

Doc Watson is from Deep Gap, North Carolina, which looks like this from the sky:

My watercolor sketch of the maps.








Here is my final watercolor for class (in progress -- soon to be 3D)